Intel is looking for outside help to get its Pinetrail Atom CPU up to scratch for HD video processing. To get this handy little item into the Pinetrail Intel has asked for Broadcom to lend a hand.

It seems that Intel will be offering the Broadcom BCM70015 graphics processor as an option on Pinetrail. Adding this will open up support for AVC, H.264, VC-1 WMV9 and MPEG2.

It was also push out 1080p while using just under 1Watt of power. In all a very smart choice for Intel at this time.

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With all backs turned against it, the blue chipmaker is now turning to Broadcom for its HD video processing needs on the Atom "Pine Trail" netbook platform that will be released in Q4. According to a few netbook manufacturers, Intel plans to offer the Broadcom BCM70015 graphics chip as an option to its partners on Pine Trail, which features support for popular codecs such as AVC, H.264, VC-1, WMV9 and MPEG2. The other strong feature of this chip is the fact that it can easily run Windows XP, Windows 7 and Linux at relatively low power.

The chip itself has a die area of 10mm² and consumes 30mW when idling. When playing 720p HD content, it consumes a little under 500mW and for 1080p HD content just under 1W. This is actually better than Nvidia's Tegra, which consumes 100mW when idling and around 2W when decoding at full powe

Picture courtesy of VR-Zone